Monday, March 8, 2010

Your Grocery Budget?

Do you have a grocery budget? I must confess that prior to January this is something I had never even thought of. We purchased the food we needed to eat. We always tried to find the deals in the store and not overspend but we never went in to a store with a plan. Since January, I have started to look at coupons as cash. I organize them (I will post my system later this week) and make my grocery list.

Now,my husband and I go into a store and look for the items on the list. We primarily purchase Buy One Get One Free (BOGO) items with 2 coupons so we can get the rock bottom deal. There are things that we simply don't have coupons for in which case we look for the best deal. My goal was to spend $100 a week for our family on our groceries. This includes the purchase of non-food items such as shampoo, deodorants, etc. Frankly, I thought that this would be super tough goal and I have been shocked on how well we have been doing. We look at things very differently now when we go into a store. I find it rather amusing now to see my husband tell me to grab the blinkies as we walk by the salsa aisle. It was just a few months ago we would look at a blinkie and if it happened to be an item we were going to buy then we used it but in general we never really grabbed them....now it is routine to look at blinkies and keep our eyes peeled for new coupon books in the store.

So, I think I should challenge myself and set a new grocery budget. The less we spend...the more we save! I don't want my family to go without because I am setting the goal too low but on the otherhand I believe that with a goal we can set our minds to achieve it.

I will hold myself accountable and post our receipts on this site but I am torn between setting our goal at $50 or $75 per week. I know some weeks it will be a little higher and some a little lower....Tell me, do you have a grocery budget? What is your budget and how well do you stick to it. I want to make the decision this week on whether we will go to $50 or $75 ...

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

We are a family of 6 so I use to spend 150-200+ a week on groceries and health and beauty items but since I have started using coupons last Aug- I have cut that down to about $100 a week. I don't really hold myself to that budget but it does average out around that- some weeks it is much higher (like trips to costco!) and some weeks I have spend well under $100. I think that would be a great next step for me- to make a committment to a monthly goal- eeks- that scares me a little :-)